Prime

At least three members of the Trump family inner orbit are looking to a future that might not necessarily involve the chief patriarch being president of the United States.
While the family publicly continues to hype Trump’s dangerous and ridiculous election delegitimization crusade, privately a few have their sights set on their own political futures.

Through this corrupt era one of the common refrains has been, “that’s why or how we got Trump.” Usually it is whatever it is the person didn’t like before Trump rebranded as the bad thing that got us Trump. But on display today is one of the real reasons ‘we got Trump.’ It’s not the deepest reason but it is a critical, critical part of the equation. It’s also why Donald Trump was able to careen through the leading candidates of the Republican party so easily in 2016.

We’re watching the press conference of the President’s legal team. It’s an all star team of rejects and degenerates from the Fox Cinematic Universe: Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Joe DiGenova. It’s both comical in its slapdash level of nonsense but also deeply corrupt and an attack on the very foundations of the American republic. In the course of this event Giuliani has claimed that most of the votes in Wayne County (Detroit) are invalid and should be discarded. Needless to say, this disenfranchises most of the African-American population in Michigan. As Giuliani succinctly put it, “It changes the results of the election in Michigan if you take out Wayne County.”

We have a new, exclusive story up right now.
TPM’s Tierney Sneed has learned that the Census Bureau identified routine issues in data from the 2020 decennial census, and will need time to fix them. This seemingly small wrinkle could have significant implications for how political power is distributed through apportionment.

In a narrow sense, this is a very New York City-centric issue. But if it comes to fruition, life as we know it in this city will not only collapse further into the unlivable realm than it already has in the wake of COVID-19, but we might see another outbreak spike in the city.
We should take a moment this morning to give a big thanks to the Biden campaign team and all the tens of millions of Biden voters. Because under extremely difficult circumstances they made sure it wasn’t close. Biden will win by at least 4 percentage points and likely more like 5. He will win by a 74 vote margin in the electoral college. Under normal, legitimate circumstances a win is a win is a win. Margins are just about bragging and feeling good. But this year it was critical and you can see that from the events of the last 24 hours.

Stunning turn of events tonight in Michigan. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked and was unable to certify the county’s vote. Wayne County includes Detroit. The Board has two Republicans and two Democrats. The Republicans refused to certify. But tellingly the GOP Chair said they’d agree as long as Detroit was left out. Basically, they were trying to pull a power play in which they used their power to toss out the votes of the city of Detroit.
The state GOP jumped in and lauded the decision. Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis excitedly predicted it was the first step toward the GOP state legislature tossing out the results of the election and appointing Trump electors to the electoral college. Finally President Trump himself tweeted excitedly that it was a turning point.
But then it all changed.
Read More
Just to keep you up to date, this Lindsey Graham story continues to grow. As we noted last night, Graham approached the Republican Secretary of State in Georgia with a plan to throw out what appears to have been a huge number of legally cast mail-in ballots. Since mail-in ballots overwhelmingly favored Joe Biden, there’s every reason to think that would have made Trump the winner and quite possibly avoided a run-off for David Purdue.